Doctors Don’t Know Cholesterol

The liver is the body's largest organ and uses up to 20 percent of the body's total energy. It has over 500 known functions regulating the metabolism of each cell. One of it’s functions is to make and control the amount of Cholesterol available for the body.

If the body does not have enough cholesterol, the liver makes more. If there is too much cholesterol it is carried to the liver for re-use or elimination. So trying to reduce your blood levels of cholesterol by dietary changes has no real effect on levels of cholesterol in the blood.

Furthermore, a diagnosis of “High Cholesterol” was historically a clear indication to the doctor that his patient was suffering from hypothyroidism (low thyroid production) and the doctor would immediately prescribe desiccated thyroid supplementation. On the following visit the patients cholesterol levels would have normalised.

LDL & HDL Lipoproteins

Cholesterol is insoluble in water (therefore insoluble in blood) so must be transported in the bloodstream by lipoproteins, known as LDL (low density) and HDL (high density). Cholesterol is not only made in the liver, but also in every cell in the body, but if that cell can’t make sufficient for its needs, then LDL lipoproteins bring more cholesterol to the cell and deliver it into the middle of the cell. The HDL lipoprotein takes excess cholesterol and returns it to the liver where it is excreted in bile, or reused, possibly acting as a precursor for other hormones.

LDL and HDL lipoproteins should never be considered either “good” or “bad”, and increasing or decreasing cholesterol in the diet will have minimal (if any) effect on cholesterol levels measured in the blood. They are part of an intricate design. Every cell membrane in the body uses cholesterol, and cholesterol deficiency may lead to devastating complications, especially in the nervous system.

Thyroid Deficiency, not High Cholesterol

The connection between high cholesterol and low thyroid activity has been known for well over one hundred years, as shown from the following quotations.

Dr. Broda Barnes said:

“Circumstantial evidence convicted cholesterol as the villain in heart attacks for many years. Finally the truth emerged when it was shown that indeed high cholesterol is frequently found in heart attacks. However, evidence has been accumulating for 100 years indicating that the real culprit is a thyroid deficiency, and cholesterol, which is usually increased in hypothyroidism, is only an innocent bystander.”

And Dr. Broda Barnes and Charlotte Barnes:

“The liver converts cholesterol into bile salts which are eliminated in the bile; this process is the usual means of eliminating excess cholesterol. The liver is sluggish in this function among thyroid-deficient individuals…Since a sluggish liver is the most common cause of hypoglycemia [low blood sugar], it should follow that the hypothyroid patient is highly susceptible to low blood sugar.”

Furthermore, Ray Peat PhD declared:

“By the mid-1930s, it was generally known that hypothyroidism causes the cholesterol level in the blood to increase; hypercholesterolemia [high cholesterol] was a diagnostic sign of hypothyroidism. Administering a thyroid supplement, blood cholesterol came down to normal exactly as the basal metabolic rate came up to the normal rate.”

“In the 1930s, a rise in the concentration of cholesterol was considered to be one of the most reliable ways to diagnose hypothyroidism (1936 Yearbook of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Endocrinology, E.L. Sevringhaus, editor, Chicago, p. 533)”

And from: “A Long Term Study of the Variation of Serum Cholesterol in Man” by Kenneth B. Turner, Alfred Steiner:

“Thyroid administration produced a sharp drop in serum cholesterol in every case. This accompanied by a rise in the basal metabolic rate.” Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 1997 Jan;46(1):17-20.

Adrenal Gland Hormones

Your liver makes cholesterol, which is the pre-hormone for each of your adrenal gland hormones, some of which (cortisol and progesterone) are critical in the process within the cells of converting inactive T4 thyroid hormone to the active form, T3. If one of these adrenal gland hormones are insufficient, the inactive T4 thyroid hormone will not be converted to T3 but to a mirror-image thyroid hormone known as “reverse-T3” which will occupy a T3 cell receptor but will not work. It will act as a “brake” and stop an active T3 hormone molecule from doing its work within that cell.

Every cell membrane in the body uses cholesterol, so devastating complications may arise from a cholesterol deficiency, especially in the nervous system.

Cholesterol Link to Heart Attacks

“Recently it has been pointed out that the cholesterol hypothesis is misguided. Critics of the idea cite compelling evidence that people with normal or even low blood cholesterol have heart attacks. … Dr. Uffe Ravnskov points out that high blood cholesterol is not closely associated with atherosclerosis during postmortems.”

Lita Lee PhD, in 2005, wrote:

“Although only 10 percent of our cholesterol is in our blood and the balance is in our tissues, the focus has been on blood levels of cholesterol. In her April 1990 Townsend Newsletter article entitled Cholesterol Mania, Rosetta Shuman says, Cholesterol, from having been merely vilified 30 years ago, has become the sole indicator of one’s lifeline. She describes many natural foods diets that show no correlation between dietary cholesterol and heart disease.”

“Other studies, including the famed 1950’s Framingham Study, showed that 50 percent of people who die of heart disease do not have high cholesterol. Researchers in the study could find no relationship between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol. Regardless of the cholesterol intake, cholesterol levels varied from low to moderate to high. In addition, this study showed the relationship of low LDL to cancer. As cancer progresses, LDL decreases and the total cholesterol level falls.”